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Hello. As you can see, despite telling you that I am on a hiatus, I am here writing words and you are here reading them. I want to tell you why I decided to take a "hiatus" but I have a problem: I don't know why. You see, I made the decision on a whim. Howevs, I think there are actual reasons inside of me and I'm going to attempt to explain them while I still have your attention.
One of the main reasons, actually, is that my blog feels really sad. This is a really sad place for me, and maybe you can see that sometimes when I write sad things and it's awkward and you don't know what to say and maybe you want to say something or maybe you just want me to stop. When I look at it, I see my sadness reflected back at me. And it's sort of like looking at a mirror when you haven't looked at a mirror for a long time. I recognize myself but it's still kind of shocking. Conor Oberst said: "I'm not surprised, but I never feel quite prepared."
It feels very self-centered. And a blog is totally self-centered. This is a place to write about myself and have a bunch of people read it and talk about me and how well or badly I write. memememe. Sometimes that's okay, but right now I really want to talk to other people. I want other people to talk to me. Instead my feelings get sent into a cybervoid.
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If you haven't yet surmised from previous posts, I'm going through a super shitty time right now. Despite everything currently being amazing, everything also sucks. You know?
I don't know how to say this, I don't know how to talk about it: my girlfriend broke up with me and I have sad feelings in that area of my heart.
Stephen Dunn said: "I wanted everything or not enough. It was all my fault."
Riese said: "I stood next to someone wearing your perfume, and it made me miss you."
Cat Power said: "I will miss your heart so tender, and I will love this love forever."
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I want to talk directly to your eyeballs right now. I wish I could name you so that you would know that I am talking to you. I wish we could make eye contact. I'm talking to you, reader. Really. I want to talk to you about things. I want to show you my christmas lights because I think you would like them. I want you to come look for used bookstores with me because I think it would be fun. Sometimes I just like to look at the spines of books. I want to cook you dinner because I'm getting better at cooking and I think that you are the kind of person who would eat my not-so-amazing food. And I don't think you would mind eating on the floor because I don't have a dining table. I want to go to the museum of fine arts with you because I have a pass and it lets me take a friend for free and I want you to be my friend. I want to go see Howl with you and I wouldn't even mind paying because that's how much I like you and also how badly I want to see Howl. I want to write you paper letters. I want to walk up Mount Royal with you because the view is pretty and totally worth it. And maybe I will put my arm around you because even though I don't really like touching, I think you're kind of comfortable. And sometimes it feels good.
I want to ask you things. I want to ask you: how do you do it? What do you do when you are lonely as fuck? And it hurts to be you? And you feel trapped inside your own mind but you know you must keep being you because there is no other person to be? How do you deal with everything all the time? I am really asking you. This is not a rhetorical question. I want to hear from you. How do you cure loneliness?
I want to try and write in my blog at least once a week. But I also want to try a lot of things. I guess, in my own weird way, I'm asking you to help me. And I know that's kind of vague, but like, maybe you could be vague right back. I don't know. If there's something you want to say, I guess this is the time to say it. Maybe you could give me some dinner recipes.
A friend of mine said: "All I want to do is go crazy and have so much fun and have things be perfect like that, but I just feel really fucking sad."
20 comments:
Hello, my name is Amanda. Feel free to name me. :)
Here's my short answer: there are dinner recipes on my blog.
The long answer is... I don't know. But if you want a blog, twitter, internet friend, I'm up for it.
oh wow. you write things that give me words for my feelings. my words aren't that good, theyre all rusty, and i think i dont have answers for your questions... but they are many of my questions too and it made me feel better that you wrote them. maybe vice-versa too?
i like christmas lights. especially the icicle kind.
I feel how you feel. Loneliness is unbearable. It's worse when you've had someone and then you suddenly don't and you're not used to feeling this way.
To be honest I'm in the 'lonely place' right now and so if I knew how to cure it I wouldn't be in this situation.
By your mention of Mount Royal how and why am I assuming you live in Montreal? If you do, go to Juliette et Chocolat on St-Denis. It's heaven.
Let out the pain, come to terms with it. Once you've hit your low, the only place to go is back up again.
Go to Pica-Pica in the village and order Shrimp in Sofrito Sauce. It's like the big O.
Go to Mado with friends and get a good laugh -enjoy the shows.
In the end this will only be a temporary cure. It won't make you feel happy but you might feel like you're living at least.
Eventually... it'll just get better. I don't know from experience but I would hope so, because hope is the only thing that can keep you surviving.
Ps. If you DON'T live in Montreal... I apologize for my assumption and advise you to fly over just to do all those things.
when im lonely as fuck...i try not to over think it..... cooking is an awesome way deflect loneliness...i love the instant gratification that comes from cooking... mount royal is beautiful at this time of year ...
here is a fall recipe that i've made before ( it could be fun depending on how much time u have to make it ) what kind of food do u like ?
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pan-Seared-Scallops-with-Pumpkin-Risotto-105604
(im glad ur back )
"When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone." - Tennessee Williams
I moved away from my parents about a month ago, for the first time. It's scary because I'm in a strange new place and I don't know anyone or anything. I really feel alone. I guess it's worse since I'm 17, I guess all 17 year olds feel alone. I walk in parks and pretend I'm with someone. It makes me feel a little better for a little while.
IJ
sometimes for me the illusion of not being alone is enough, you know? i know it's different but i moved a state away from the vast majority of my best friends but i joined some sports teams and spent time outside my own head. sometimes you have to do anything to get away from stuff that gets you down just so enough time passes to make it ok to look at without dying or being wracked with emotion which is not always useful. and then also sometimes these 'activities' will also lead you down previously unseen potential life paths. so you never know.
i am also genuinely interested in writing paper letters. i even have a fountain pen!
you probably already know my answers, but i think we can all learn from each other's loneliness so:
+i listen to lots of of podcasts; there's a time for crying, but when it's keeping me from falling asleep night after night, it's only hurting me. i turn on this american life and let it play until i fall asleep.
+i make a giant production out of every meal. finding recipes, shopping, cooking, setting the table [or floor] take time and the more i eat, the less likely i am to fall into a hungry hole of sadness.
+i make a list and do it starting with the easy things first because a sense of accomplishment can lead to bigger things and keeps me from feeling like i'm in over my head w/r/t/ things that need to happen.
+as obvious as it sounds, i'm still learning to be happy in one particular moment because worrying about my overall happiness was a losing game.
+i play dress up and then make a pile of things i don't want anymore. i don't get rid of them until later, though, because what if i was just in a moment of self-loathing and actually wanted those things?
+i clean.
+i ride my bike and run errands. even if i don't find anything i was looking for, i still got exercise and fresh air.
+i email or call someone i haven't talked to in a long time.
+i buy something cheap that will make me smile for a moment. this just might be the materialistic american in me, but empty jars, candy, and shampoo can be exciting.
this is a really long list, but i'm also writing it for myself because it turns out that loneliness exists all over the world.
How do you cure loneliness?
Remember that loneliness is not a disease...Life is more bearable when you forget to live with expectations...
amanda: hello amanda. i checked out your blog and i like it very much. internet friends would be nice.
jenn: i think it's the acknowledgement that sometimes we're lonely that helps, instead of people pretending everything is perfect all the time.
nikki99: i do live in montreal. juliette and chocolate is the best ever. thanks for the other suggestions, i'll have to check them out.
anonymous: unfortunately i do not like seafood but definitely cooking is a good distraction. and then you get to eat afterwards.
anonymous: that seems to be true. all the lonely people should gather together on my blog.
anonymous: why is it worse because you're 17? i moved away from my parents for the first time and it feels lonely and scary and everything is new and loneliness doesn't get better the older you are.
mon: yes you are right. fake it till you make it.
laura: i should buy some pull n' peel and also i should probably eat healthier.
lesh: WINNER
[I don't know much about internet commenting etiquette. I think I'm faux pas-ing it up by commenting after you already commented on commenters’ comments. You may ignore the following.]
re: loneliness
I try to walk it off. I also enjoy trying to: internet it off, dance it off, movie-watch it off, sing it off, autostraddle it off, friend-converse it off, random-human-interact it off, etcetera it off.
I mostly try joking it off, though. Which may or may not be considered unhealthy behavior, because sometimes trying to joke feelings off equals putting them off altogether. Until that proves impossible, of course, and then the feeling-turd hits the fan like nobody's business, or something.
The problems at hand are lighter than at heart, maybe, is what I’m trying to say (actually, that’s what Jack White says).
As you can see, I'm ill equiped when it comes to answering important questions, but I still wanted to try because this post was really lovely and moving; and not in a 'youyouyou' kind of way, for what it's worth.
Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUl_a45-vek
Hello,
My name's Whitney. I like your words. They make me feel less alone. So I guess my cure for loneliness is lurking blogs like yours/Autostraddle. I'm kinda feeling the same way as you right now. I don't have friends in the city and I just want someone to go to the movies with, or dinner parties (I'm a pretty decent cook imho). The only advice I can give is try to tough it out. You never know who's out there waiting to do all those things with you.
oh gosh I feel like a creep writing this since I have been reading but never commented before. Even creepier when we share the same "mountain" and streets and stuff.
I've had the same relationship with the blog I never update only because it becomes the vacuum where all woes and sentiments get flushed into the internetosphere. Once I've posted I feel like despite my best intentions... I didn't have anything nice to say.blah blah anyways...
I'm relatively harmless and like cooking experiments. I love our mountain and I have been dying to go to MBAM. I'm a workaholic... but in the off chance than you would like an awkward platonic gallery date, let me know.
Speaking of MBAM by the way, you should check out the Otto Dix exhibition - it opened up last week.
And by the way, boy am I retarded - I just started reading your blog and damn there's a whole lot of times you've mentioned Montreal. And also, you mentioned once Math & Logic, Descartes and Art History in a previous post. Were you in Liberal Arts by any chance?
Soo creepy you must feel like you're being stalked. No I'm just enjoying your blog (mostly during my Art History class) and questions are popping up.
wepa: those sound like really good ideas. maybe i could shrug it off? also: LOLCATZ
wcollins2332: whitney, whenever i think of your name i think of whitney from the real l word. but you seem kind of the opposite of her. that's sort of irrelevant. anyways thank you, and i hope you find someone to cook for. i think that would be nice.
gaia: hihi i would love an awkward platonic gallery date. email me if you are serious: emily choo 19 at gmail dot com.
nikki99: i was in liberal arts! were/are you? this is so exciting. are you at dawson?
I'm at John Abbott! I wanted to go to Dawson but I live in the West Island so it was too ridiculous for me to get down there every morning. This IS exciting!
Oh we should also do a platonic date if you want =)
It's just a coincidence that I began reading your blog and it turned out you lived in Montreal AND you were in Liberal.
I guess you're at University? What program are you in now?
nikki99: email me! let's hang.
i was going to reply to this a long time ago saying that the best way to cure loneliness is to be a part of something bigger than yourself. then i realized i was full of shit and really just distracting myself by constantly being busy. if you ever find yourself in berkeley again we could go climb the hills and stare out at the sf skyline or aimlessly wander the city at night or i could show you my research lab. i don't know if you'd be into that. i hope you're feeling better.
My cure for loneliness: Get a kitten.
Raise it with more love than you have given anyone, and it will love you unconditionally, even after you're mad because it has done something bad.
It's like having a child, but without eighteenplus years of commitment, without those "I hate you" *doorslam* moments, and without having to listen to him talk. :)
It feels good to have something always there, something that probably won't leave you and probably won't break your heart.
I would love your christmas lights.
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